1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to revenue reconciliation for providing multimedia services. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to building alert rules and generating alerts to track whether billing for services and payments to vendors are consistent with the value of services provided.
2. Background Information
The recent trend has been for network providers to offer integrated access to different types of services, including Internet, telephone, video and data services. For example, traditional telephone service providers are offering high speed Internet access, Voice over IP (VoIP) and television programming over DSL connections, while cable television providers are offering high speed Internet access, VoIP and telephony services over conventional cable connections. The variety of services and corresponding media require significant demands on tracking and billing customers with respect to their usage, as well as settling with different vendors for the various products and services not directly supplied by the network provider. The task is further complicated by consolidating the information into a single bill.
Due to this complexity, network providers are at risk of losing track of the revenue, both owed and paid to them by their customers, and owed and paid by them to their vendors. The enormous amount and different types of data and services being tracked makes it difficult to readily and efficiently identify issues related to the network providers' revenue, such as revenue leakage, data anomalies and application defects. Network providers are therefore at risk of under-billing customers, while overpaying vendors, for the multimedia services.